Helen Mirren then

CHeck out Mirren is cavorting her way through the notorious 1979 flick Caligula,which has been called "aggressively, hatefully, nonsensically shocking." (And that's one of the sympathetic reviews.) Not the best choice, but since it also despoils the credits of acting luminaries John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole and Malcolm McDowell, we'll cut her some slack. Less defensible is her role in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, where she plays a music hall floozy recruited to stand in for the Queen. Nope, it didn't make any sense in the movie, either. But Mirren is such a confident dame (and Dame) that we can't imagine her being ashamed of anything she's done, no matter how ill-advised. Whether she's playing Tolstoy's wife, any number of queens, or a sadistic teacher, she's going to do it with style, and she knows it.

CHeck out Mirren is cavorting her way through the notorious 1979 flick Caligula,which has been called "aggressively, hatefully, nonsensically shocking." (And that's one of the sympathetic reviews.) Not the best choice, but since it also despoils the credits of acting luminaries John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole and Malcolm McDowell, we'll cut her some slack. Less defensible is her role in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, where she plays a music hall floozy recruited to stand in for the Queen. Nope, it didn't make any sense in the movie, either. But Mirren is such a confident dame (and Dame) that we can't imagine her being ashamed of anything she's done, no matter how ill-advised. Whether she's playing Tolstoy's wife, any number of queens, or a sadistic teacher, she's going to do it with style, and she knows it.

CHeck out Mirren is cavorting her way through the notorious 1979 flick Caligula,which has been called "aggressively, hatefully, nonsensically shocking." (And that's one of the sympathetic reviews.) Not the best choice, but since it also despoils the credits of acting luminaries John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole and Malcolm McDowell, we'll cut her some slack. Less defensible is her role in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, where she plays a music hall floozy recruited to stand in for the Queen. Nope, it didn't make any sense in the movie, either. But Mirren is such a confident dame (and Dame) that we can't imagine her being ashamed of anything she's done, no matter how ill-advised. Whether she's playing Tolstoy's wife, any number of queens, or a sadistic teacher, she's going to do it with style, and she knows it.